How Can I Have a Positive Racial Identity? I'm White! | Ali Michael | TEDTalk

Great Ted Talk by Ali Michaels that addresses whiteness. Drawing on psychologist Janet Helm, she offer the following definition of what a positive racial identity means for white people:

“A positive racial identity [for a white person] is not about feeling good about being white.  It’s also not feeling bad about being white. It’s about understanding what it means to be white in this context of a heavily racialized society that has historically—still today—distributes resources and opportunities inequitably, favoring white people against people of color. Understanding what it means to live in a society that teaches people of color internalized oppression and teaches white people internalized superiority. And dealing with that sense of internalized superiority so that I can show up and be and live in a healthy multi-racial community with people of color in which we work against racism and other oppressions, knowing that all oppressions are connected.”

I like how she framed her own transformation as a result of taking an African American Studies course. This is why so many of us who are teachers advocate for Ethnic Studies. The criticality that such courses provide bring justice and new ways of knowing and being in the world that no longer reinscribe white privilege and white supremacist ways of knowing and being, helping us to live together peacefully in the world.

-Angela Valenzuela

Western “Superiority” is Killing Us by Tim Wise

Tim Wise is one of the few people calling out, as a white man, the devastating flaws of Western culture, most especially its cult of technologically-based superiority as follows:

Rather than debate who has contributed more to the world under Eurocentric standards, let us question those standards at their core because the entire paradigm under which white folks tend to assess greatness is flawed. 

Such flawed assumptions reflect not only the systematic mis-education of white people, but also how its seductive-ness helps to explain its durability.

Please read this entire piece as Wise tears down the idols and icons regularly marshaled to support the pinnacles of our achievements—even if they ultimately threaten planetary survival.

Scholars like Aníbal Quijano, Walter Mignolo, María Lugones, and many others are calling for "de-Westernization" as the antidote to continuing Westernization. Here are some helpful resources.

Lugones, M. (2010). Toward a decolonial feminism. Hypatia, 25(4), 742-759.
Lugones, M. (2016). The coloniality of gender. In The Palgrave handbook of gender and development (pp. 13-33). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Mignolo, W. D. (2007). Delinking, Cultural studies, 21(2-3), 449-514.
Mignolo, W. D. (2007). Introduction: Coloniality of power and de-colonial thinking, Cultural studies, 21(2-3), 155-167.
Mignolo, W. D. (2011). Epistemic disobedience and the decolonial option: A manifesto. Transmodernity, 1(2), 3-23.
Mignolo, W. D. (2012). Local histories/global designs: Coloniality, subaltern knowledges, and border thinking. Princeton University Press.
Quijano, A. (2007). Coloniality and modernity/rationality. Cultural studies, 21(2-3), 168-178.

Enjoy!

-Angela Valenzuela

Western “Superiority” is Killing Us

Whiteness, technology, and the cult of progress

Tim Wise

Jun 15 · 

I should have set a timer.

Like the kind that lets you know when your hard-boiled eggs are ready.

Because having just published a piece on Medium calling into question the fetishization of “intelligence” as typically defined (by things like IQ tests) I knew it wouldn’t be long before the snide comments began rolling in.

Not just the cheap shots — the ones implying I was only questioning IQ tests because I must have done poorly on one — but the politically-loaded types as well. Like how liberals and leftists disdain successful people, and because successful people tend to have higher IQs (arguable but whatever) we have to tear down the concept of intelligence as part of our “war on excellence.”

And of course, there were the racist ones insisting I was dismissing IQ because black folks tend to score lower on IQ tests, and I would prefer to elide this fact.

Indeed it was this issue of racial supremacy and inferiority that animated most of the negative replies I received. And if I wasn’t willing to take IQ tests seriously, they had another line of attack. What about the simple fact, they asked, that most all achievements in history have had European origins, and none African? This, they suggested, proved the validity of the racial hierarchies I had derided in the piece on IQ.

As one detractor put it, “Africans have never accomplished anything of technological or scientific significance.” What’s more, they didn’t even have wheels until the era of slavery.

A bit crude, but not much different than what Rep. Steve King of Iowa thinks. So too the Proud Boys who call themselves “Western chauvinists” who “refuse to apologize for creating the modern world.” This, even though none of them (except perhaps founder Gavin McInnes) have ever created anything but paperwork burdens for probation officers.

In other words, the notion that “the West” is due credit for all good things is pretty standard fare, as is the assumption that the West means white people.

So too the calumnies heaped upon Africa, even though those offering them have spent no time studying it. They know what they know, having attended American schools in which one receives the impression that African history didn’t begin until slavery.

Oh, and that Egypt isn’t really in Africa.

Or that it is, but the ancient Egyptians were white.

Mmm, hmmm. Ok then.

One could spend time filling in the gaps of their ignorance, I suppose. There is more than enough scholarship out there to do the job. But I doubt it would make much difference. The work of Cheikh Anta Diop, Walter Rodney, Molefi Asante, or even Basil Davidson — a right proper Brit who was one of the most respected Africa scholars in modern history — would likely mean little to them.

But as informative as that material can be, it amounts to playing the game racists want to play, and on their ground, in a way you can’t ever win.

Fact is, by the standards of Eurocentric excellence, of course Europe has contributed more to the world. If a culture gets to establish the criteria by which all cultures are to be judged, it is unlikely they will be the ones to come up short.

Although some choose to play this game — like those who point to “100 black inventors in history” or the existence of advanced kingdoms in sub-Saharan Africa while Europeans were still shitting in the woods — this kind of rebuttal still falls into a white supremacist trap.

How? Simple: Racists can always point to Africa and say, “Ok, so once upon a time you were kings, but look at you now,” as a way to suggest a reversion to the mean of inferiority. I know it’s racist nonsense, but it’s how they play the game. And it works.

And honestly, why should black folks assume being kings and queens — which is some elitist bullshit venerated by, you guessed it, white folks on an Ancestry.com bender — is the best way to judge a culture or its people anyway?

Rather than playing that game, I would recommend changing the game altogether.

Rather than debate who has contributed more to the world under Eurocentric standards, let us question those standards at their core because the entire paradigm under which white folks tend to assess greatness is flawed.

To suggest we should value a culture based on its technological achievements — the standard argument — elevates the importance of things above people. It requires us to affix the label, “superior,” to any culture with advanced technological prowess, even if that technology is used to exterminate others, or in such a way that could lead to the extinction of even the culture that created it.

So instead of viewing the creation of nuclear weaponry as evidence of a fundamentally pathological and destructive tendency among the whites who brought it forth, we are expected to praise the genius behind it, taking no note of the consequences now made possible by such “progress.”

By contrast, hunter-gatherer societies that nurtured respect for one another and engaged in little or no predation against others or the land base upon which they depend would be considered inferior in this cosmology. But under what rational basis would such an ordering make sense? It wouldn’t unless one had already bought into the white supremacist view of things.

Furthermore, the “great man” paradigm of historical analysis constitutes an assault on the dignity of the vast majority of the globe’s inhabitants. This includes, one should note, almost all citizens of even the most advanced nations.

After all, few will invent anything of note, compose a symphony, discover a cure for a deadly disease, or manage to do any of the other things that the “great man” theorists extol as the only important human victories. By the standards of ruling class history, most Americans, of whatever race, are useless and have accomplished nothing.

Likewise, entire cultures (and not just black and brown ones) come up short in such an analysis. What we think of as European Civilization is quite limited: composed of the achievements of only a handful of nations, and even then, only a small fraction of the persons of those states. After all, most people have been little more than peasants for the bulk of recorded history.

The idea of technological advance as tantamount to superiority makes no more sense than the way we calculate Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In the latter case, we sum the total value of all things produced, whether bullets and bombs or life-saving medicines, as if production were the be-all, end-all of human existence.

But should we not consider the purpose to which all that advanced gadgetry is put?

If not, then we should applaud the chemists at Dow for giving us Napalm while viewing their victims (who after all never created anything thatadvanced and merely survived the depravity of the first bunch) as inferior specimens of humanity.

Oppenheimer gets the praise, while the citizens of Hiroshima become a historical footnote.

But how cut off from your own humanity must you be to suggest that technology and other inventions are the ultimate measures of human worth?

After all, a robot can make any of the things that those who worship technology consider evidence of cultural superiority. But no robot can lead a struggle for human freedom, democracy, or liberty.

No robot can raise a child into an adult, or write a novel filled with pathos and irony, or any human feeling whatsoever.

No robot can nurse a sick puppy back to health, write a screenplay that can make us cry, or devise something as lofty as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

To consider technology evidence of a culture’s superiority is to engage in the ultimate form of auto-dehumanization. It is to miss the point of creation, whether seen as a God-given gift or an act of nature.

Surely, superiority in any meaningful sense is less about one’s ability to create and destroy, than one’s ability to empathize, and to stop doing things that wreak havoc on the planet and one’s neighbors. To develop the capacity to kill and maim on a grand scale is not a sign of superiority. To be capable of saying you’re sorry, even for making the effort, might be, but good luck finding anyone among the masters of the universe willing to do that.

Hell, when it comes to technology, no robot can accomplish even that which bees manage every day: pollinating plants that bring forth fruit, nuts, and berries, keeping the chain of life trotting along. In other words, even creatures to which we extend little credit for their intelligence, are more critical to life on this planet than even the most impressive pile of computerized junk.

And if that pile of junk threatens our survival — either because the extraction of the minerals needed to produce it has degraded the ecosystem, or because the machine’s purpose is the bringing of death, as with guns, bullets or bombs — then we should view its creators as either crazy, evil or both. We should certainly not consider them superior, unless our concept of superiority involves the ability to extinguish life on the planet; unless the will to omnicide has come to represent, for us, the pinnacle of human achievement.

But maybe that’s the problem: we do define superiority this way.

The ability to destroy that which either God or nature (or both) has given us, places us, in some sick way, above God, at least in our minds.

By our actions we seem to be saying that although God may have been able to create the world in six days, we can and will destroy it, if not as quickly, every bit as completely.

If this is superiority, we could do with quite a bit less of it.

White fragility is a serious, systemic, and deeply historic condition that Robin Di Angelo courageously calls out.  It's so deep that this message is best heard from a white person herself.  White people need to understand "whiteness" as a social construction in every way that the concept of race is a social construct that goes back to the invasion and ensuing colonization of this continent.  As opposed to others whose identities have a geographic association, there is no such thing for whites—or for any other "color" (black, brown, yellow, red, etc.).

White person or white-identified person: Can you hear the word, "invasion?"  After all, that is what it was no matter how it gets omitted from, or distorted in, our children's public school history textbooks.  The genocide of native people—and with the use of this word—also has to be acknowledged even if our country has yet to own up to this.  On whose land are we on? There is never an instance in which we are not on native land.

It's certainly progress, but terribly shameful that it was less than two months ago that the Texas State Board of Education voted on changes to the state's curriculum requiring the teaching of slavery as the primary rationale for the Civil War.  Previously, the grand narrative was soft-pedaled with the order running from sectionalism to state's rights, and then finally, to slavery when it actually runs in the opposite direction—from slavery to sectionalism and state's rights.

This revised, factual curriculum is barely going into effect next fall in 2019 which means that we've not only been systematically mis-educating our youth on this for forever and a day (or giving mostly-white, teachers permission to do so), but also appeasing white fragility, guilt, and narrative power to the point that few, if any, whites on the SBOE ever took it upon themselves to champion this cause.

Praise to Marisa B. Perez and the democrats on the board for spearheading this change (why should they even have had to have been "democrats?")  , and thanks to our families, communities, and universities for keeping the truth of slavery and white privilege alive, but shame on us as a polity for ever letting this get this far.

All told, white fragility should not be reduced to an emotional state that comes and goes, but is rather a standpoint that holds enormous consequences in so many arenas of private and public life, including, if not especially, state curriculum which is of massive importance given its purported intention to educate the masses on a truthful basis.

Teaching the truth of history is admittedly always more ideal than real because of the contested nature of knowledge.  However, silencing our history on invasion, slavery, conquest, genocide, and colonization and their enduring, far-reaching effects is so big an oversight as to not at all be unintentional.  

Hence, the importance of white fragility.  Read on.

-Angela Valenzuela

Also read:  DAUGHERTY, O. (2016). Texas history curriculum to emphasize that slavery played 'central role' in Civil War, The Hill

A Sociologist Examines the “White Fragility” That Prevents White Americans from Confronting Racism

By Katy Waldman

July 23, 2018

In more than twenty years of running diversity-training and cultural-competency workshops for American companies, the academic and educator Robin DiAngelo has noticed that white people are sensationally, histrionically bad at discussing racism. Like waves on sand, their reactions form predictable patterns: they will insist that they “were taught to treat everyone the same,” that they are “color-blind,” that they “don’t care if you are pink, purple, or polka-dotted.” They will point to friends and family members of color, a history of civil-rights activism, or a more “salient” issue, such as class or gender. They will shout and bluster. They will cry. In 2011, DiAngelo coined the term “white fragility” to describe the disbelieving defensiveness that white people exhibit when their ideas about race and racism are challenged—and particularly when they feel implicated in white supremacy. Why, she wondered, did her feedback prompt such resistance, as if the mention of racism were more offensive than the fact or practice of it?

In a new book, “White Fragility,” DiAngelo attempts to explicate the phenomenon of white people’s paper-thin skin. She argues that our largely segregated society is set up to insulate whites from racial discomfort, so that they fall to pieces at the first application of stress—such as, for instance, when someone suggests that “flesh-toned” may not be an appropriate name for a beige crayon. Unused to unpleasantness (more than unused to it—racial hierarchies tell white people that they are entitled to peace and deference), they lack the “racial stamina” to engage in difficult conversations. This leads them to respond to “racial triggers”—the show “Dear White People,” the term “wypipo”—with “emotions such as anger, fear and guilt,” DiAngelo writes, “and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and withdrawal from the stress-inducing situation.”

DiAngelo, who is white, emphasizes that the stances that make up white fragility are not merely irrational. (Or even comical, though some of her anecdotes—participants in a voluntary anti-racism workshop dissolving with umbrage at any talk of racism—simmer with perverse humor. “I have found that the only way to give feedback without triggering white fragility is not to give it at all,” she remarks wryly.) These splutterings “work,” DiAngelo explains, “to reinstate white equilibrium as they repel the challenge, return our racial comfort, and maintain our dominance within the racial hierarchy.” She finds that the social costs for a black person in awakening the sleeping dragon of white fragility often prove so high that many black people don’t risk pointing out discrimination when they see it. And the expectation of “white solidarity”—white people will forbear from correcting each other’s racial missteps, to preserve the peace—makes genuine allyship elusive. White fragility holds racism in place.

DiAngelo addresses her book mostly to white people, and she reserves her harshest criticism for white liberals like herself (and like me), whom she sees as refusing to acknowledge their own participation in racist systems. “I believe,” she writes, “that white progressives cause the most daily damage to people of color.” Not only do these people fail to see their complicity, but they take a self-serving approach to ongoing anti-racism efforts: “To the degree that white progressives think we have arrived, we will put our energy into making sure that others see us as having arrived.” Even the racial beliefs and responses that feel authentic or well-intentioned have likely been programmed by white supremacy, to perpetuate white supremacy. Whites profit off of an American political and economic system that showers advantages on racial “winners” and oppresses racial “losers.” Yet, DiAngelo writes, white people cling to the notion of racial innocence, a form of weaponized denial that positions black people as the “havers” of race and the guardians of racial knowledge. Whiteness, on the other hand, scans as invisible, default, a form of racelessness. “Color blindness,” the argument that race shouldn’t matter, prevents us from grappling with how it does.

Much of “White Fragility” is dedicated to pulling back the veil on these so-called pillars of whiteness: assumptions that prop up racist beliefs without our realizing it. Such ideologies include individualism, or the distinctly white-American dream that one writes one’s own destiny, and objectivity, the confidence that one can free oneself entirely from bias. As a sociologist trained in mapping group patterns, DiAngelo can’t help but regard both precepts as naïve (at best) and arrogant (at worst). To be perceived as an individual, to not be associated with anything negative because of your skin color, she notes, is a privilege largely afforded to white people; although most school shooters, domestic terrorists, and rapists in the United States are white, it is rare to see a white man on the street reduced to a stereotype.

Likewise, people of color often endure having their views attributed to their racial identities; the luxury of impartiality is denied them. (In outlining these discrepancies, DiAngelo draws heavily on the words of black writers and scholars—Ta-Nehisi Coates, Toni Morrison, Ijeoma Oluo, Cheryl Harris—although, perhaps surprisingly, she incorporates few present-day interviews with people of color.)

In DiAngelo’s almost epidemiological vision of white racism, our minds and bodies play host to a pathogen that seeks to replicate itself, sickening us in the process. Like a mutating virus, racism shape-shifts in order to stay alive; when its explicit expression becomes taboo, it hides in coded language. Nor does prejudice disappear when people decide that they will no longer tolerate it. It just looks for ways to avoid detection. “The most effective adaptation of racism over time,” DiAngelo claims, “is the idea that racism is conscious bias held by mean people.” This “good/bad binary,” positing a world of evil racists and compassionate non-racists, is itself a racist construct, eliding systemic injustice and imbuing racism with such shattering moral meaning that white people, especially progressives, cannot bear to face their collusion in it. (Pause on that, white reader. You may have subconsciously developed your strong negative feelings about racism in order to escape having to help dismantle it.) As an ethical thinker, DiAngelo belongs to the utilitarian school, which places less importance on attitudes than on the ways in which attitudes cause harm. Unpacking the fantasy of black men as dangerous and violent, she does not simply fact-check it; she shows the myth’s usefulness to white people—to obscure the historical brutality against African-Americans, and to justify continued abuse.

DiAngelo sometimes adopts a soothing, conciliatory tone toward white readers, as if she were appeasing a child on the verge of a tantrum. “If your definition of a racist is someone who holds conscious dislike of people because of race, then I agree that it is offensive for me to suggest that you are racist when I don’t know you,” she writes. “I also agree that if this is your definition of racism, and you are against racism, then you are not racist. Now breathe. I am not using this definition of racism, and I am not saying that you are immoral. If you can remain open as I lay out my argument, it should soon begin to make sense.” One has the grim hunch that such an approach has been honed over years of placating red-faced white people, workshop participants leaping at any excuse to discount their instructor. DiAngelo, for all the outrageousness she documents, never comes across as anything other than preternaturally calm, patient, and lucid, issuing prescriptions for a better world as if from beneath a blanket of Ativan. Her almost motorized equipoise clarifies the book’s stakes: she cannot afford to lose us, who are so easily lost.

Self-righteousness becomes a seductive complement to “White Fragility,” as gin is to a mystery novel. (“I would never,” I thought, when DiAngelo described the conversation in which her friend dismissed a predominantly black neighborhood as “bad,” unsafe.) Yet the point of the book is that each white person believes herself the exception, one of very few souls magically exempt from a lifetime of racist conditioning. DiAngelo sets aside a whole chapter for the self-indulgent tears of white women, so distraught at the country’s legacy of racist terrorism that they force people of color to drink from the firehose of their feelings about it.

The book is more diagnostic than solutions-oriented, and the guidelines it offers toward the end—listen, don’t center yourself, get educated, think about your responses and what role they play—won’t shock any nervous systems. The value in “White Fragility” lies in its methodical, irrefutable exposure of racism in thought and action, and its call for humility and vigilance. Combatting one’s inner voices of racial prejudice, sneaky and, at times, irresistibly persuasive, is a life’s work. For all the paranoid American theories of being “red-pilled,” of awakening into a many-tentacled liberal/feminist/Jewish conspiracy, the most corrosive force, the ectoplasm infusing itself invisibly through media and culture and politics, is white supremacy.

That’s from a white progressive perspective, of course. The conspiracy of racism is hardly invisible to people of color, many of whom, I suspect, could have written this book in their sleep.

Katy Waldman is a staff writer at The New Yorker